In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children. Most of the children didn´t like it and were very hostile towards the idea that they would not be able to fly around freely in the Femtedim-world.

Abstract This essay has grown out of an interest for the subject of religion and religious education for upper secondary pupils in Sweden. Our society is characterized by cultural, religious and secular diversity, which also reflects in the classroom where individuals with different religious preferences share space and participate in discussions. One of my aims is that this essay can be a contribution for future studies in the religious field. Previous research has shown that Swedish pupils increasingly lose interest in the subject of religion (on a personal level but also more in general). There is a possibility that this picture might have changed since these studies where done, and that is what I want to investigate in this essay.

This study aims to find more knowledge about preschool teachers? point of view on the situation of children living in economic hardship and how it affects them at the preschool. With economic hardship becoming more frequent and common amongst families with young children we find the subject important and in need of more attention. Studies have proven the negative effects of poverty on children?s development and health and since the preschool is a big part of children?s everyday life the study aims to see what perspectives practitioners have on the issue and how they plan activities and learning situations based on the needs of these children.

The aim with this report is to investigate what influence the way playgrounds are used throw the case study in Vänersborg, and also to find methods for municipalities to collect information about how playgrounds are used. The methods were observations, interviews with parents and children, a questionary with questions about what playgrounds they used, how often and why they used them and what the children used to do there. There was also a demographic investigation and documentary research. The most popular playground, Skräcklan, gets visitors from all parts of the municipality. It is located in a park with a view over the lake Vänern, there is a parking place and a café and it has furthermore a large area and many play equipments. Many of the families make shorter trips and picnics to this place. In exception of this playground, the families almost always go to the playground in their neighborhood and their part of the town.

.The Whole language program is in Sweden generally referred to as ?Kiwimetoden? - ?the Kiwi program? (author?s direct translation) partly due to the fact that the Whole language program originates from New Zealand. Whole language is basically a literacy program and approaches literacy from a holistic point of view. Children learning to read and write should do so in the same natural way children learn to speak their native language which is in the context of authentic language as a whole. In Sweden the program is generally practiced together with a commercial and pre-organised material called ?kiwi? or ?Stjärnsvenska?.

In the curriculum for Swedish pre-school the focus is mainly on five concepts. These are care of the children, learning, influence, rearing and security. These concepts are to characterize the activities of the pre-school in Sweden.Back in time the focal point of pre-school activities for young children was mainly on security. The learning part became more prominent as the children grew older. When speaking to teachers and parents I do sense that some believe this is the case even nowadays.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how comics, here defined as a combination of text and images, are handled by the libraries in regards to subject analysis, classification and indexing. A comparative approach has been used in this study. First, common practices, methods and theories concerning subject analysis developed for documents consisting of text or images are presented. Then the current systems at two special libraries, specializing in comics and consequently dealing with both text and images, are examined and related to the above mentioned practices, in order to discover differences and similarities.

The purpose of this thesis is to find out if principals and teachers have experience, expectations and thoughts about the differences that the new Education Act means in relation to the old one about action programme. Through qualitative interviews with two principals and four teachers, I have tried to answer my research questions that I have made based on the purpose. The questions are: How do the interviewees describe the routines about action programme?  Has, according to the interviewees, the routines been changed with the new Education Act? How do teachers and principals experience the differences between the old and new Education Act regarding the action programmes?The results of my survey shows that the process of action programme is different at different schools and that it has been adapted to the new Education Act in varying degrees. These results give differences in the experiences of the new directives.

The Swedish legislation (Socialtjänstlagen, SoL 5 kap 1§ 6 st.) state that the social welfare committee is particularly responsible for those children whom are in need of support and help after an adoption or custody matter has been decided. "Adoption - but at what price?" SOU 2003:49 is a state report with the purpose to investigate different aspects around international adoptions, which brings up and discusses what supports there is for adoptive families in Sweden. With this background and a special attention towards adoptive children's health conditions when arriving to their new country we decided to study the subject adoption. By interviewing different professionals and volunteers that work with adoptive families in Sweden the aim with this study was to acknowledge how they look upon the support the Swedish community offers for adoptive parents and also how they consider the knowledge about adoption among those who in their line of work can meet adoptive children is.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how public libraries work with children's books, in other languages thanSwedish, regarding acquisitions. The purpose is also to describe what the libraries assignments are in regard tochildren with non-Swedish backgrounds. This is then put in a relation to the libraries democratic assignment.The main questions are: What are the libraries' assignments, as described in the libraries regulations? How do thelibraries work to fulfil their assignments?To answer these questions a survey in two parts has been carried out. The first is a study of the libraries'regulations, and various handbooks that serve as an inspiration for librarians.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

AbstractThe purpose with the study is to contribute knowledge of teacher?s thoughts of, and actions in potentially stress filled situations at preschool. The methods I?ve been using are qualitative interviews and unstructured observations of hallway situation at dressing and the transit between lunch and rest.At the interviews with the teachers it showed that none of them feels stressed but there are stress filled situations. The lunch and transit between lunch and rest is a stressful situation, where there is a lot to do, like the dishes, the teachers break and the lie-down.

The purpose of this survey was to discern possible similarities and difference between how teachers in preschool and pre-class respond to children?s own initiative out of a power perspective. The results of this study is collect by observations that we have done in free and planned activity in both preschool and pre-class as well as a few interviews with some of the teachers. The results have shown that teacher?s responses to children?s own initiatives in preschool and pre-class to most part is similar, despite the difference in their commission.

Over-investors ? a study of advanced language pupils in the upper secondary school.  The thesis examines the advanced study of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) from a sociological point of view, inspired by Bourdieu.  Founded in official statistics and a specially designed survey its main findings can be said to be that it is mainly pupils with a high amount of acquired educational capital from higher social backgrounds who avail themselves of this opportunity, predominantly girls. The amount of inherited language and transnational capital in the family seems to be of particular importance for the pupils? choice of advanced language studies. French, German and Spanish are the predominant languages of study.

AbstractThis study investigates the impact of storytelling for children's language development in preschool from a sociocultural perspective. The purpose is to find what narrative methods teachers use to promote children's language development. I also want to examine whether the children are involved in the storytelling. To get answers to my questions which include what methods teachers use, narrative meaning and function, and their children's participation, I have used qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers at four different preschools.The results of my survey show that teachers use a variety of methods at storytelling. The most common methods were reading, rhymes and daily storytelling while eating.